Got A Name, Sweetheart?
by chujelly
Summary: <html><head></head>The soldiers, battered and bloody, were all the same. But he was different.</html>
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This is a quick fic I whipped up for someone on Tumblr, whose name just so happens to be Kenzie. There should be a sequel soon.

She kept her hands on him for as long as she could. As long as she could bear the slick and squelch of the man's intestines under her fingers and palms. She was a nurse. This was what she had been trained for. But there was no training for a man's life slipping away from him…from _you_, who had tried with tourniquets and iodine and plasma to save him. She wasn't even able to catch the man's name before a passing medic ripped his dog tags from around his neck and carried them off.

"Damnit!" Kenzie swore, wiping her brow with the back of her arm, just below her wrist covered in blood. "Damnit!" The man had shuddered once before going completely still and she couldn't bear to look at him anymore. His eyes stared without seeing at the ceiling of the aid station and Kenzie closed his eyelids with crimson-coated fingertips that were steadily drying in the stale air.

With a sigh, the woman retrieved her handkerchief from her dress pocket and walked outside, beginning to scrub hastily at her hands. She would get most of it off, she knew, but she also knew that there would always be a slight tint of copper to her skin that would stay. It would stay until this war was over and she was free of dying men and broken promises. She had signed up for this, but then she hadn't. She had signed up to save lives, not to try and fail. Not to hold a man's life in her grasp only for it to slip away from her at the last second.

"Welcome to the real world, right?" Kenzie muttered to herself, rubbing her skin raw with the handkerchief.

"The real world, huh?" A voice from her left. "I'm from there, y'know."

Kenzie's head moved so fast she thought she might get whiplash. She didn't pretend that she was more paranoid than the men who were out on the front line, but the aid station was close enough to the battle that the explosions kept her up at night as much as they did anyone else, making her jump in her skin before she was called out of her cot to close a hole in a soldier's leg or abdomen or wherever. Another soldier stood there, puffing on a cigarette and smirking at her. "…are you injured?" She asked. Deep down, in the parts of her that she had nearly left back in the States, something registered that this man was very handsome. Normally they all went by in a blur of bloody faces and broken jaws. It was weird to see a soldier standing in one piece in front of her, with seemingly nothing wrong with him.

"Oh, only hurtin' from a broken heart." The man clutched at his chest where his heart was located (Kenzie thought she could hear it thumpthumpthumping strongly against the man's ribcage). "Because you are the prettiest thing I've seen since jumpin' in Normandy. You got a name, sweetheart?"

Kenzie blinked, her hands stilled. "…I don't suppose you see many pretty things."

"No, but…" The man took a step closer, tugging hard on the cigarette in his mouth. "…if I did, I think you'd be the prettiest."

Kenzie thought the smirk on the man's face must have been permanently etched there. She reached up with nimble, bloody fingers and plucked the cigarette from his mouth, flicking it to the ground and grinding it out with the heel of her boot. "My name's Kenzie. Smoking kills."

"So the pack o' Luckies tells me." The man's brown eyes trained on Kenzie's fingers still suspended in air in front of him. "I'm George."

"George…" Kenzie placed her hand on George's chest, hooking her fingers over his shoulder and squeezing so that she felt the faint pounding of his heart through his olive drab jacket. She breathed out. "…doesn't feel like you've got a broken heart."

"Not now." George, a small smile still on his face, laced his hand with hers, brushing some of the blood from it with his thumb. The woman watched as a red droplet soared to the ground and splattered there. Then she looked back at George's face and his deep, chocolate eyes. Hidden there was something Kenzie was glad to see. A jovialness that most soldiers didn't have, weren't allowed to have lest it betray them to death.

"How long're you here?" Kenzie found herself asking.

"Company moves out again in two days."

Kenzie simply nodded and leaned forward, giving George a chaste kiss on the cheek. Two days was longer than what she had with most soldiers, who lasted fifteen minutes under her hands and beneath the too-sharp edges of shrapnel embedded in their bellies.

End.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **Part 2. Enjoy. :)**  
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It was one of those rare, productive days where Kenzie had, so far, saved more lives than she had lost. It was always these days that she felt better, cleaner, and the blood seemed not to stain her hands so much. When she told a soldier they were going to live and knew that it wasn't a promise to be broken, she was happy. Such an overused word, happy, but she'd rather be that than aggravated or miserable or forlorn or any other number of things she felt on any other number of days.

"You're going to be fine," she sighed. But it wasn't the sigh she normally used, when she knew that what she'd just said was going to be a lie in about ten minutes when the man would convulse and pass away. It was a sigh of relief that she accompanied with a smile.

"Thanks, Nurse. You're a life-saver, literally." The man, an Anthony Lewis, smiled up at her also and visibly relaxed now that the nasty piece of shrapnel was out of his leg. It had just missed his main artery and Kenzie wondered if it was the work of God or merely luck.

Someone grabbed Kenzie from behind around the middle and hoisted her up with a laugh before setting her back on the ground again. She wasn't paranoid this time. Over the course of two days, she'd learned that George Luz had a habit of sneaking up on people.

"Hello, beautiful." He leaned over her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek.

"Hi." Despite her clipped greeting, the grin that spread across her face was bigger than when her father had bought her a puppy when she was ten years old. And that had been a pretty momentous occasion.

"How are you this lovely day?" George asked, leaning on the edge of the wounded man's cot.

"I'm fine…I'd be better if you'd stop hurting my patient." The added weight on the cot had made Anthony's leg shift and he was grimacing in pain.

"Him? He'll be fine! Won't ya, buddy?" George squeezed the man's leg, at which the man groaned long and loud and Kenzie slapped Luz's arm.

"Not funny."

"It was a little funny."

Kenzie ignored him and gathered the bloodied rags scattered around the man's leg. She bustled off to attend to a soldier who had a bullet lodged in his left arm and was only half-conscious. George followed.

"So, I was thinking you could accompany me tonight to the bar across the street. We're havin' a dance."

"A dance?" Kenzie stared at George like he head two heads.

George shrugged. "Well, y'know. You'll be the only gal there and we'll really be the only ones dancin', but you get the idea."

"No." Kenzie reached for her metal tongs.

"Why not?" George looked aghast.

"This gonna hurt a lot, Nurse?" The wounded man asked, swaying a little where he sat.

"Not with this…" Kenzie caught site of the man's dirty dog tags as she administered the morphine. "…Robert."

"How'd you-" Robert, however, was cut off by the sight of Kenzie digging the tongs into his wound, stretching the skin apart, and extracting the bullet. Robert gave a low groan, but otherwise only uttered, "That's disgusting. Thank God for morphine…"

Kenzie smiled at the man and began dressing the wound. She addressed George again. "Because I have a lot of work to do."

"Can't argue with that..." Luz seemed in awe of what she'd just done, staring openmouthed at the man's gaping arm before he seemed to snap out of it. "Look, Kenz. Come with me…just for an hour. It'll be fun!"

Kenzie glanced up at George and then at Robert. "What do you think I should do?"

The man grinned a bloody smile and laughed. "I say go with him. He looks desperate."

Luz kicked the man's boot with his own. "Yeah? You look like you got in a fight with a Kraut and he won. What happened, they not have enough mouth guards for the front lines?"

"Enough you two." Kenzie nearly snapped, bandaging Robert's arm. "…I'll go, George. But only for an hour, right?"

"Right!" Luz grinned and swooped down again to kiss her on the cheek before leaving, singing some Marlene Dietrich song he'd heard on the radio in town earlier.

"Bagged yourself a winner there, Nurse." Robert chuckled.

"Oh, he's a real charmer."

The night had been fun, she couldn't argue with that. She was glad she'd gone, actually, whereas earlier she figured she would have regretted it. Felt guilty, as it were, for leaving wounded men back at the aid station and not being there to help them. Really, though, they were only across the street. If the other medic's and nurses had needed her, she would have been there in 2 minutes flat.

But no one had come to call. And she found herself being introduced to other men of Easy Company, a rowdy, rambunctious group, especially one Joe Toye, who took every opportunity he could to hit on her. For instance, when George had gone to get drinks, or when George had played a game of darts. Kenzie also found herself laughing more than she'd done in the entire time she'd been overseas. The funniest time being when Joe Liebgott cracked a Jewish joke and no one else laughed except Kenzie, whose aunt had married a Jewish guy. Kenzie nearly spit her drink all over the table trying to contain her raucous laughter.

"I told you you'd be glad you came," George told her when they were finally leaving for the night. The man could brag, she would give him that.

Kenzie nodded. "It was fun. I think Joe's my favorite, though."

"Liebgott?"

"Toye."

George rolled his eyes and laughed. "Bastard." He'd caught the man in action when he'd come back from buying the third round of drinks and almost socked him one in the mouth when the guys told him Joe'd been hitting on her nearly all night. Kenzie could do nothing but sit back and laugh some more.

"George?"

"Hm?"

They were nearing the aid station now and Kenzie had to get something off her chest.

"Uhm…" She swallowed hard. "…you're leaving…tomorrow."

George looked down, biting his lip. "Yeah."

Kenzie shook her head. "I just…I'm worried?" She had no idea why it came out as a question. "Yeah, worried. That…it'll be you." That the next time she saw him would be under a river of blood and a mound of broken bones.

"Shit, Kenz." George placed both hands on either side of her head and leaned his forehead against hers. "It won't be. I mean, I'm no fortune teller, but I ain't had one scratch my whole time here and I'm pretty confident that it ain't gonna happen any time soon."

"How do you know?" Kenzie hated herself for wanting to cry on their last night together. She wanted George to have a happy memory of their last night together, not some depressing vision of Kenzie with tears running down her cheeks and red splotches all over her face.

"Because how can I die if I'm gonna come back and marry you?"

Kenzie wasn't even sure if he was being serious or just joking around like he always was, but she surged forward anyway and her lips crashed into his. She had never been a particularly romantic type, but as George's mouth opened up beneath hers and they breathed each other's air, Kenzie quite liked the idea of a white wedding with George Luz. And maybe Frank Perconte would be George's best man and they could put Joe Toye in a dress to be her Maid of Honor.

Kenzie found herself laughing at the thought and that was more like it. That was what people did around George Luz. They laughed, because he was just so damn funny. And that was what she wanted George to remember if they never met again. A smile on her face as they kissed in the chilly night air outside of a bar in a city that she couldn't even remember the name of, but it didn't matter.

All that mattered was them.

End.


End file.
